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Buckfast Abbey

Seventy-nine years ago today, the 21st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, repealing old dry and dreadful, was ratified. What better way to celebrate than with this festive pomegranate cocktail ?

Pomegranate Poinsettia
1 oz. Pomegranate Liqueur
1 oz. Cointreau
1 oz. Orange Juice
3 oz. Champagne

Instructions
Mix first three liquids in a tumbler with ice. Slowly add champagne stirring gently. Rim a flute glass with orange zest. Strain into the champagne flute.


As Katherine noted yesterday , the pomegranate is “the ideal symbol of everything from Persephone’s temptation in Greek mythology to the fruitfulness of the Promised Land and Abraham’s many descendants to the passion of a young maiden’s crimson lips and cheeks or the blood of martyrs to the unity of all individual believers brought together in Christ’s church,” so be sure to ponder the depths of human existence and the ineffable majesty of the universe while you’re mixologizing.

Edit : Here’s what St. John Chrysostom has to say on the matter of Prohibition:

“For wine was given us of God, not that we might be drunken, but that we might be sober; that we might be glad, not that we get ourselves pain. ‘Wine,’ it says, ‘maketh glad the heart of man,’ but thou makest it matter for sadness; since those who are inebriated are sullen beyond measure, and great darkness over-spreads their thoughts. It is the best medicine, when it has the best moderation to direct it.

The passage before us is useful also against heretics, who speak evil of God’s creatures; for if it had been among the number of things forbidden, Paul would not have permitted it, nor would have said it was to be used. And not only against the heretics, but against the simple ones among our brethren, who when they see any persons disgracing themselves from drunkenness, instead of reproving such, blame the fruit given them by God, and say, ‘Let there be no wine.’ We should say then in answer to such, ‘Let there be no drunkenness; for wine is the work of God, but drunkenness is the work of the devil. Wine maketh not drunkenness; but intemperance produceth it. Do not accuse that which is the workmanship of God, but accuse the madness of a fellow mortal. But thou, while omitting to reprove and correct the sinner, treatest thy Benefactor with contempt!’”

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